Bunker No. 11, Hangar Bay
The alarm had been ringing for thirty long seconds before Lieutenant Sarah Jenkins landed on her knees, taking the floor of the hangar at a dead sprint.
Built to hold twenty vehicles, the cavern was a cold bunker of steel and old grease, its walls still echoing with the long-gone sounds of war. Only four vehicles remained in the Hangar Bay, their tarps hastily removed by engineers, ready to serve their owners in the upcoming fight. The Terra Maulers stood in their cradles, an ugly, sturdy, and beautiful sight, each one equipped with six articulated spider-legs that took their place on tracks and wheels. Their hybrid diesel-electric engines fed the battery banks, providing the vehicles with the ability to traverse any terrain and remain silent for long periods of time. Their torsos were modular, allowing for the swapping of various equipment, but the troop bays in the middle and the sensor mast section on top remained standard. Located on the top, the sensor mast acted as the vehicle's brain, its many cameras and rotating radar/lidar dishes giving the crew a 360-degree view of the forest. On the sides of the maulers, light armor plating kept the enemy fire at bay, but the fire from other spider tanks would pierce it with ease.
Lieutenant Sarah Jenkins was a twenty-eight-year-old vehicle operations officer with greasy hands, her long hair tied in a ponytail. She had been asleep for only two days longer than Adrian.
"Report!" she shouted, vaulting over the command Mauler's hood and landing on its side with a roll.
A sensor tech, still in his thermal blanket, pointed his eyes to the monitor. "Ma'am, the Research Team Alpha beacon is five point two klicks north-west. Falcon's cameras picked up a large hostile with an off-scale thermal signature. It appears the enemy is using some kind of energy weapon. The power signature is the same as the one we saw during the quake!"
"How long can they hold?" Sarah asked, fastening her harness.
"According to Falcon, there is one wounded, a rifleman overheating, and something called Dragon's Breath..." Jenkins did not ask what that was. "All Mauler crews, this is Jenkins! We have a priority evacuation request! TM-1000A troop transport with me, TM-1000B medevac will provide cover. TM-1000C cargo has the batteries! Weapons free but hold your fire if the science team is in danger! Move out!"
The four Maulers rolled out of their cradles, their hydraulics whining, legs unfolding, and commenced walking. Each leg pushed off the ground, lifting over a toolbox, over a coiled cable, over the sleeping engineer's head, and landing with a soft thud, pressing into the floor from the weight. Inside the maulers, the exosuit charging ports glowed green, data transferring from the vehicles' systems into the crew's neural interfaces, and quick-release harnesses snapped.
The hangar doors, which had opened onto the forest yesterday, opened again. The cold air of Veilwood forest rushed in with it.
"Convoy, follow me! Adaptive speed, tree-avoidance is on!" Jenkins commanded, and the four maulers rolled out, fast, their legs pushing off the ground with a speed that should have been impossible in the tight woods, their LIDARs painting a picture of the forest in real-time, the legs adjusting to the terrain with each step.
North-West of Veilwood Forest
"Take cover now!"
Falcon's voice barely covered the sound of the Great One's breathing. The serpent's throat glowed white and then erupted in a sun-like point.
The Great One fired.
The weapon was not made of fire. It was a beam of condensed mana, the raw power of the magic plane channeled into a narrow ribbon by the Great One's magic organs. The beam was a meter wide, cutting through the clearing like a scythe.
Where it fell, everything vanished. The log Spartan had been hiding behind exploded into ash. The fern tree behind it split in two, its upper half falling to the ground, still alight. The beam excavated a glowing trench in the ground, turning the dirt to glass.
The marines screamed and dove for cover. Raven landed in the trench with Maria, his visor automatically going dark. Viper took cover behind the roots of the tree, his exosuit's exterior temp alarm blaring. Bulldog dragged Spartan by the harness as the beam passed a meter above their heads, peeling the paint off their suits.
The beam fired for three long seconds before dying. The only sounds in the clearing were the crackling of the flames and the hissing of blood.
"Status!" Falcon shouted, still recovering from the attack.
"Raven alive! Science team alive!" yelled Raven from the trench
"Bulldog alive! Spartan not dead! Suit at forty percent!" replied Bulldog
The Great One, spent from the attack, lowered its head, blowing smoke from its jaws. Its eyes locked on the trench where the marines had taken cover and inhaled for the second attack. Its throat began to glow, the light growing stronger.
It did not finish glowing.
The trees on the eastern edge of the clearing groaned under the pressure, not from the wind. Four Terra Maulers drove through the canopy at a walk, legs pressing into the soft ground, their sensor masts swiveling. The branches snapped and fell from the vehicle's hulls. The lead mauler, TM-1000D, had Jenkins half-standing on the open tailgate, painting a red targeting reticle on the Great One's chest.
"Falcon team, this is Jenkins. Down! Down!"
"Contact friendly armor!" shouted Falcon. "All friendlies down!"
The Maulers opened fire.
TM-1000A and TM-1000C's side hatches opened while the maulers walked, twenty more marines sliding down the quick-release harnesses, landing on their knees and immediately rolling, bringing their Kicker rifles to bear. The heavy bolters mounted on the maulers' hulls joined the firing line, their large caliber pulse guns sending twin darts the size of a finger at the Great One.
Two thousand tungsten darts per second impacted the Great One's plate, feeding the kinetic energy into its ancient, armored hide. The scales that had stopped swords, spears, and even the claws of the Lightning Tiger for centuries could not stand against the combined fire of the maulers' hull-mounted guns.
The Great One screamed and thrashed, its tail smashing into one of the maulers, sending it sideways. The mauler, however, kept walking, its legs forcing it to move despite the blow. Jenkins rolled with the movement, bringing the mauler's Pulse Bolt Cannon to bear on the serpent's neck.
"Target the throat! Don't let it breathe again!" she ordered over the din.
The combined fire of the maulers saw the targeting lasers carve into the Great One's throat, finding the glowing mana organ. It burst, and the Great One gave a sound that almost sounded human, something between a gasp and a scream, that tiny metal things could kill it.
The Great One fell, its body smashing through the trees, sending shockwaves through the ground, and landed on its side, several trees lying across its back, smoke rising from its now-dilated eyes. For a few seconds, the only sound in the clearing was the gunfire and the heavy breathing of the marines.
Falcon walked to the command mauler, blood trickling down his cheek, and Jenkins climbed down, assisted by her exosuit.
"One wounded, Spartan compromised, science team safe, hostile down," Falcon reported, his voice returning to the formal tone. Jenkins gave a short nod and looked at the Great One's body.
"Med bay B is on the way. Get that Spartan to them." The medics, Dr. Zhang and Dr. Talia, who had been riding in the TM-1000C with the spare batteries, approached the corpse, their scanners floating in front of them. Rohan, still in the TM-1000D, raised his relay pack to keep the link stable.
"General, you have to see this," Rohan said, pointing at the Great One's body. "That heat source was not from the hostile."
Inside the serpent's ribcage, where the heart should have been, pulsed a small, fist-sized crystal. It was warm, glowing faintly, encased in the charred meat of the Great One. The crystal pulsed again, and all the sensors in the clearing screamed in unison.
"That's..." Talia whispered, her eyes wide. "That's a natural reactor! The energy output is insane!"
Dr. Zhang took his turn at scanning the crystal. "The STC does not have an entry for it, but I think I know what it is. The energy signature is similar to the quake, and the forest's background, only this one is more concentrated."
Jenkins looked at the crystal, then at her mauler's battery indicator, which was now at the reserve level from walking to the clearing. _This would be useful,_ she thought, looking at her crew through the visor.
__
"Can we use it?"
__
Talia looked at the crystal, the first foreign object in Veilwood that could save their world.
"We may have to learn how."
Three figures in leaf cloaks watched from the edge of the clearing, their hands still on their hilts. Veilwood's elven scouts, who had been tracking the Great One for over a hundred years, unable to harm it in any way, watched dumbfounded as the metal giants finished the job they could not. One of them turned and ran like the wind, returning to the hidden demi-human village.
Far to the north, in the marble palace of Zenithia, the crystal ball of a court mage's familiar, which had been observing the forest, cracked down the middle under the strain of the Great One's death. Emperor Alexander Zenith rose from his throne.
"Bring me answers," he said, his voice like ice. "What dares to kill in my forest?"